TV: Teen angst and dirty play all part of school ball doco

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Whoever dreamed up the school ball concept must have been a sadist. As angst-inducing events go, it can be second only to the school reunion - that joyless occasion where those who have made it turn up to lord it over the losers.

There is plenty of teenage angst evident in The School Ball (8.30 tonight on TV3's Inside New Zealand), much of it related to the question which has been central to the issue since Cinderella tottered off to waltz in those glass slippers - what, oh, what to wear?

There are no fairy godmothers on hand for the kids of Wellsford's Rodney College, followed here through the five weeks before ball night, and caught up with again one year after the decorations came down. These are kids, says the school's principal, born without a "silver spoon in the mouth."

In the absence of kindly strangers with magic wands, these teenagers make do with uncomplaining mums hunched over the sewing machine, long-suffering parents left wondering how on earth their daughter managed to trick them into opening up their home to 50-odd adolescents for a pre-ball party, and after-school jobs to pay for the trips to the hairdresser.

Some things haven't changed. The girls still spread the rumour that a certain boy is taking them to the ball - thus shaming him into issuing the invitation. That old trick.

One girl, wearing dark glasses, turns up the next day to help to dismantle the decorations. "I got a bit upset. The guy I liked went off with another girl." That old dirty trick.

And there is still an air of patronising magnanimity from the A-team kids. It's the school ball, so everyone gets an invite, even the "so-called geeks of the school. If they come, it doesn't matter. Everyone talks," says one. How very, very kind.

Some things have changed since my schooldays when no self-respecting member of the First XV would have been seen anywhere near a girly hair salon. Three of the Rodney boys have taken the day off to drive into the city to have their locks coaxed into something that will turn them into something like, "What is it? Beau of the ball? Something like that."

Something like that. The emphasis is on transformation. It's a rite of passage, says the principal - and beyond.

"The boys," three mates who live in an old bach together without any apparent means of support other than their after-school jobs, "have dreams beyond the ball," intones the voiceover. Well, you would hope so.

Even the "geeks" presumably are allowed to dream. Possibly of a reunion where the little princesses and princes of the school have run to fat.